


Red Ball, Blue Box

by metonymy



Category: Doctor Who, The Middleman (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-09
Updated: 2010-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:25:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/pseuds/metonymy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Middleman is suspiciously cheery. Wendy is appropriately suspicious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Ball, Blue Box

This was not your ordinary redball. And Wendy had been working for Jolly Fats and O2STK for long enough to know that redballs were never anything she could call ordinary. The only ordinary thing about her job was that she wore a tie. Which maybe wasn't that ordinary for girls, and for a former starving artist it wasn't actually ordinary either.

But your ordinary redball didn't have her boss grinning as he drove to the location Ida had provided. It didn't --

"Are you _humming?_"

"Hm? I - no!"

"No, you weren't humming, you were singing! With little dah-dee-dahs!" Wendy fixed the Middleman with Puzzled Glare #48, which was the one that meant _my boss is a terrible liar for someone who has a glove compartment full of fake IDs._

"Dubby, you're not focusing. We have a Code 73. You haven't encountered one of these before and you need to be ready!"

"Your suspiciously jaunty _humming_ must be impairing my focus, then," Wendy said, slumping back in her seat. "It's a 73, so it's aliens. Is it the Clotharians?"

"Won't know till we get there." And yet he had that little crinkle at the corner of his mouth that meant he was suppressing a grin.

"Boss. You heard that recording of the noise that flagged it as a redball in the first place and your eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. You know these aliens. And either they're friends of yours or you are way more excited to kick some [BLEEP] than I've ever seen you before. And you know what Sensei Ping says."

"Hm?"

"Familiarity with the tiger will never dull its teeth."

"An excellent point, Dubby, but - ah! Here we are!"

The field looked like any other field in the suburbs. Except for the part where there was a big blue box with a light on the top and some writing that said "POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX." And there was a dude just beginning to peer out of the box.

The Middleman strode forward, hands swinging in a manly fashion but not anywhere near his gun. Wendy followed more cautiously, ready to reach for her gun at any time. Because seriously: a spaceship that looked like a big box and a skinny dude did not assuage her fears. If anything they made her more nervous.

"Doctor?" the Middleman asked, his voice ringing out across the field.

"Oh, hello!" the skinny guy said, eyes lighting up. "You again! I haven't seen you in _ages!_ You had the hair! And the thing!" His fingers gestured vaguely in the jawline area. "The goatee. I can't grow a proper beard. Great disappointment."

Wendy glanced at her boss, then at the guy. "Uh, boss?"

"Hello! Sorry, I'm terribly rude, it's a bad habit of mine." The dude bounded across the grass between them and shook her hand enthusiastically. Pinstripe suit and Chuck Taylors. Not a bad look. Not as silly as Maximum Aldwin, so maybe he wasn't Clotharian, but Cindy had just looked like a preteen. "I'm the Doctor. And you are?"

"Wendy Watson. I'm --"

"My associate and Middleman-in-training," her boss cut in. Sounding almost like he did when Guy Goddard had thawed out and hit on her. Was this guy hitting on her? He grinned and dropped her hand and shoved his own hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels.

"Pleasure to meet you, Wendy Watson. So!" He rounded on her boss. "Ready for a bit of the old run-and-dash?"

"You know I prefer to stand my ground," the Middleman said. But he was smiling warmly. Maybe he was hitting on - oh, EW, WEIRD, Wendy hastily shut down that train of thought before it pulled in at Grossout Central Station.

"Boss? Uh, the Doctor? If you're on our side, then there's probably somebody else we should be -" Wendy almost finished her sentence before her watch and her boss's watch started blurping at them.

"Sharp," the Doctor said admiringly. "You're very sharp, Wendy Watson."

"Yeah, like a glass knife with an edge one molecule wide."

He laughed. "And funny. I like you, Wendy Watson. Ever thought about traveling through time?"

"Not the time, Doctor," the Middleman said abruptly, having finished talking to Ida on his Middle-watch. "We've got an Uvodni incursion and it's threatening the City Convention Center."

"The Sci-Co-Fan-Con is today!" Wendy said suddenly.

"The what?" asked the Doctor.

"The Scifantasy and Comicbook Fan Convention. Joe Ninety was gonna go, he asked me to help paint him blue for his costume." She shuddered.

"Son of a Sontaran!" the Middleman didn't swear. "It'll be like picking out a straw-colored needle from an extra-large haystack!"

The Doctor laughed. "Then what are we waiting for?"

**Author's Note:**

> Also for bamfdoll at IJ. There is canonical basis for these fandoms existing in the same universe. MM is totally humming the theme song in the opener, also.


End file.
